


Lullaby for a Stormy Night

by elluvias



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: But it's okay, I promise, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Multi, also probably shouldn't be writing with a fever while on lortab, also the moment where i realize i know way too much about both x-men and tolkien, and bilbo has storm's powers though is called tempest, and thorin has wolverine's powers though not the adamantium skeleton, but i am, but it'll get fixed, eventually, hobbit cast in the x-men universe, so this'll be fun, the company is this world's version of the x-men, there was a bit of a nasty breakup that happened off screen, well sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:03:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elluvias/pseuds/elluvias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins is a florist, southern gentleman, and an omega level mutant who used to go by the name of Tempest. Though his days as the second in command of The Company are now behind him Bilbo's thrown headfirst into the life he left behind five years ago taking up the mantle as the legal guardian of Fili and Kili. Dealing with supervillains, emotional preteens with superpowers, apocalyptic crisis, and his ex boyfriends Bilbo's going to need a lot of tea to deal with what life has dealt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lullaby for a Stormy Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IronPanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronPanda/gifts), [GabesGurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GabesGurl/gifts).



The wind was still as the air hung hot and humid around him. The grass beneath his feet was hard, prickly, half dead and mostly brown, wilting and baking under the oppressive summer sun. Bilbo’s skin was flushed pink from the heat, with the beginnings of a sunburn starting along his freckled nose. The day was bright and cheerful, with a too blue sky above him dotted with lazy white clouds.

His tongue ran along his teeth, hidden in his mouth he focused on the sharp little pinpricks of pain. He had to focus, standing here at the Hobbiton Town Fair, he had to keep control of himself. The forecast spoke of sunshine and heat, a continuation of the yearly dry spell in late August. There was going to be sunshine for the townspeople, there was going to be happiness and goodwill. No one was going to notice plain frumpy Bilbo Baggins, third generation florist, supposed genius, wayward prodigal son of the esteemed Baggins family. The gossip about him was intermittent at best, and that was how Bilbo Baggins liked it.

Because today he couldn’t deal with any good intentioned neighbors, not with any modicum of grace. Today he wanted to just curl up in the peaceful sprawl of Bag End, let his control loose, and let the torrential storm in his heart out. Let the weather mirror his mood, let the storm rage outside as it did inside.

Bilbo Baggins was unfortunately better than that or was perhaps more terrified of what could happen if he let go.

It was the curse all Omega level mutants had to bear. Bilbo could kill if he lost control, he could destroy the entire bloody planet if he wanted to. The most powerful atmokinetic to ever exist and he had been trained, from the moment he stepped foot onto Istari’s Academy for the Gifted, to always maintain control. It was a lesson that had stuck, even now, when he was drowning in his grief inside his mind, his outward façade had a small pleasant smile and distant eyes.

Today was Dis Oakenshield’s funeral. Today Bilbo’s best friend was being buried and he was over a thousand miles away because he didn’t want to cause a bloody scene. He didn’t want a screaming match to start between him, Thorin, and Dwalin that would inevitably draw the entire Company into the fray. He didn’t want Fili and Kili to have to deal, once more, with the messy breakup between their ‘Mommy’ and Uncles. Let the boys have their pain and grief, let them heal, Bilbo would come up in a week or so and pay his respects. Dis would understand. Dis always understood Bilbo wanted to keep things from being messy.

Those poor boys, his poor boys. Fili and Kili shouldn’t have to deal with losing their mother so young. They were only twelve. Bilbo wanted to be there, he wanted to be with his twins and wrap them up in his arms and sing them lullabies until they slept and never let go. The weather witch wouldn’t even fight it when the twins would reach for the bond they’d made with him. Bilbo wasn’t even certain when they made it, he hadn’t even known until they were seven it had been there. He should have noticed it before, but he hadn’t. Not between working on school, being the second in command of The Company, spending time with his lovers, and being a parent to two beautiful boys.

Fili and Kili might not be his blood, but he’d changed their diapers enough, cleaned up unmentionable messes, kissed cuts and bruises, yelled, laughed, and loved those boys alongside Dis to the point where he knew he was a parent. He hadn’t intended to be, not when Dis had come to him pale and shaking a hairsbreadth away from hysterical when she waved the pregnancy test under his nose. It wouldn’t have been easy for Dis to begin with, they were both teens, both in a boarding school for mutants. Her mutation made it dangerous though, with just the slightest touch she could borrow someone’s powers, and any accidental touch could turn deadly. She hadn’t meant to become pregnant, she hadn’t meant for this to happen when she’d taken Gandalf’s newest power suppressant and gone to the party in town. Yet one night of passion and thirst for life that could have been had changed the course of her future. Bilbo had stood by her, he was her best friend, her roommate, her adopted brother. She wouldn’t do this alone, and she hadn’t. Not during the long months of her pregnancy where she refused to take the power suppressant off, no matter how much she felt ill during the later weeks. Not when she’d taken it off and realized that the gadget no longer worked, her power had evolved to ignore it, that she could accidentally kill her fragile twin boys.

Bilbo had stepped in, becoming the extra set of hands Dis had needed. Thorin and Dwalin helped, but their responsibilities were just a hair greater than Bilbo’s, Bilbo had the time, and he was Dis’ roommate. He was convenient.

Though sometimes he did wish that Dis hadn’t been so insistent in brainwashing the twins into referring to Bilbo as ‘Mommy’.

Even now, when Dis had brought them down from Massachusetts only weeks ago, setting the twins loose in Bag End the little monsters called him ‘Mommy’. Bilbo had long since stopped trying to correct them. Belladonna, when she’d been alive, had laughed merrily at hearing her only son being called that, just as she’d laughed when the boys had called her ‘Grammy Boggins’.

How long would it be til Bilbo heard his boys laughing again? How long til they let their grief go just enough to begin living again?

It’d probably be years from now if he wasn’t barred from using the phone to call them. Though it wouldn’t surprise him if Thorin forbade that too. They hadn’t talked civilly in the five years since they’d broken up, hell they hadn’t talked at all. It’d be too much to ask for Thorin to let him keep having contact with the kids, not when his presence upset the feral mutant so much. Bilbo just hoped Dwalin would be up for the job of being emotional support for the twins, though he didn’t have much hope. Bilbo loved the 6’8’’ monster of a man and he had a heart of gold, it was just Dwalin was as emotionally constipated as Thorin most days and was about as delicate as a rampaging bull in an antique store.

Bilbo would call, later, first Gandalf to gauge Thorin’s mood, then Thorin himself to see what could possibly be worked out.

Thinking of talking to his ex, either of his exes was bringing on a headache and the uncomfortable beginnings of a panic attack.

The breakup hadn’t been pretty and most days Bilbo still didn’t understand why it’d happened the way it did. Most days still thinking about it brought tears to his eyes and tremors to his hands. That he didn’t need, not today. Not when he had work to do and a duty to the other residents of Hobbiton to let this day be bright and cheerful and everything he wasn’t feeling inside.

“Why tha hell are ya even here?”

Hazel eyes snapped from the small arrangements of flowers he had set up to the diminutive figure of Primula Brandybuck. She was almost twenty one and quite content to work in her father’s bakery when she wasn’t barging her way into Bilbo’s shop, shoving him out the door and telling him to ‘eat something or he was going to make baby jesus cry’ or to ‘go home and sleep because he was causing everyone within a five mile radius to have sudden fits of narcolepsy’. Primula was one of his favorite cousins, smart as a whip, sweet as honey, and a momma bear standing at a diminutive 5’3’’. 

Bilbo had far too many cousins, over half of Hobbiton could claim some sort of blood relation to him in some form or fashion and the other half could claim relation by marriage. It was this sort of small town politics, added in with the ever ongoing feuds between the local churches, that had trained him for crisis negotiation with The Company. Hell anyone in Hobbiton could be plucked up and shoved into one of the many ridiculous plethora of situations Bilbo had been thrown into during his tenure as Tempest and they’d have done just as well as he had, for every resident of this sleepy town filled with gossip and petty squabbles had been trained in high level crisis negotiations since they could walk.

“Working?”

“I said ‘why’ not ‘what’, idjit.”

The insult was said gently, familiarly, one of his favorites to use on others. It was one of the few words that there was no way he could hide the drawl in his voice, the twang in his words. Though he didn’t much like it being turned on him.

“Because I said I’d be here.”

Bilbo couldn’t help the shrug of his shoulders as he looked into Primula’s too bright eyes. He never told her how he hated her eyes, because they were far too close to the eyes that haunted his dreams.

“Shit, fuck that. I’ll take over. Ya go…ya go home, alright? Make some tea, lock tha door, be unsocial. I don’t wanna see a fake smile or polite nod o’ yer head fer at least two days Mister Baggins.”

An argument found its way to the tip of his tongue. This was his mother’s business, he should be here, no matter how small the clientele base he was actually going to get here today was going to be. Belladonna would have been here rain or shine, bell on her toes, ready to gossip and gasp, laugh with everyone else and sell flowers by the handful. Bilbo wasn’t Belladonna though, he was quieter, calmer, plainer, and far less radiant than his mother.

Bilbo Baggins only had his brains and his powers to make him interesting, and both of those he had to hide more often than not. No, he was a plain frumpy man with a spectacularly failed relationship behind him and a growing list of dead loved ones.

“Yes. I’ll just go home. Here’s the key to the register and put any orders for bigger arrangements in the mailbox for the shop.”

Dropping the key into Primula’s hand he gave her a watery smile, wondering vaguely how he might have known. It could have been anything from the fact she was a clever girl to perhaps he wasn’t the only mutant resident of Hobbiton. Either was viable, but his curiosity was dead in the water right now. Finding his loafers he slipped them on and ducked his head, avoiding eye contact with everyone, blending into the crowd. Well sort of, it was hard to truly blend in when he was wearing a sweater vest and khakis in August.

Still he made it to the parking lot and into Myrtle without a single person trying to engage him in small talk or meaningless pleasantries. God he loved Myrtle, not that he actually knew a thing about classic cars or even was quite attracted to them. No, he loved Myrtle, his 67 Impala because Dwalin had spent over a year restoring her. He had practically rebuilt the car from the ground up and then presented it as a birthday gift, the last birthday gift, he’d ever received from his ex. He could have sold her, could have gotten rid of the memories that Myrtle had inside her both good and ill and started over. He could have done a lot of things, but he kept her. He kept the silly old car and learned as much as he could about cars to maintain her _properly_ , which still probably wouldn’t be proper enough for Dwalin but it wasn’t like Bilbo could call his ex and ask for tips about how to fix Myrtle.

Bilbo couldn’t hear the man’s stupid perfect voice in the background on the phone without bursting into tears _five_ goddamn years later. No, burying himself in books and learning was better than the emotional rollercoaster that would be. If it also gave him an excuse to fall asleep in the garage, curled up and dirty but exhausted and blissfully dreamless next to a car without too much guilt on his part then he’d do it. Bilbo felt far too much guilt over a great many things than to add his horrible coping excuses to it.

It didn’t take long until Bilbo was on the long driveway up to Bag End. There were few places more beautiful, in Bilbo’s mind, than Bag End. The white plantation style mansion, over a hundred years old, closer to two hundred actually, had been painfully restored by hand by Bungo Baggins as a wedding present to Belladonna. Bilbo had grown up amongst its rambling hallways and bright windows, he’d run across the great green lawn, tumbling through his mother’s garden, splashing through the babbling brook and staring down into the small murky pond at the back of the property. It was a large property, a large house, for just one person. It was almost oppressively empty, if it weren’t for the love that still lingered there. Filling up the nooks and crannies, chasing away the dark shadows with little reminders of childhood happiness and love.

Bilbo Baggins might be mostly alone in this world, but he had things to remind him of the times when he wasn’t. That would be enough, it would have to be enough.

Pulling into the garage Bilbo let himself into the house. Going straight for the kitchen he began to focus on making tea. He was reaching for his homemade chamomile and rose petal blend when a creak and a snuffle behind him had him decidedly _not_ shrieking in fright.

“ _Mommy_ >”

The snuffling presence behind Bilbo murmured wetly and even as Bilbo’s heart was crawling back from his throat and the static he had called forth to his fingers dissipated Bilbo knew who was there.

“Kili! Good lord how, where’s Fili?”

The trembling brunette now before him wiped at his face, smearing snot on the sleeve of his dress jacket. Bilbo’s wounded heart broke just a little more for the boy who was practically his son. Kneeling down he didn’t hesitate to gather the prepubescent boy into his arms, even as the niggling knowledge that the twelve year old shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be anywhere near here, that he should in fact be approximately a thousand miles away in Massachusetts poked at his brain.

“Fee’s changing in our room but I heard you drive up and I wanted you and he’s coming right now but I was faster and Uncle Thorin’s being mean because he didn’t want us to come to you but Mother said we were. Gandalf said that Mother said we were yours now and Uncle Thorin started yelling and Uncle Dwalin was trying to get him to stop and we just wanted you but you weren’t there and Fee and I ran and we ended up here and Mommy don’t make us go back.”

Somewhere in Kili’s breathless ramble Bilbo felt another presence launch itself at him. Bilbo didn’t have to look to know it was Fili. Shifting and opening his arms wider Bilbo let the other boy burrow into his side. He didn’t have the heart to tell them to ease up on grasping at him in his mind either, not when he was grateful to have them in his arms, to have them solid and alive and reminding him that he hadn’t lost everything that he’d ever loved. He had his boys.

Pressing a kiss to both of their heads, Bilbo processed Kili’s words. If what Kili had said was true, which was an if, then Bilbo perhaps had custody of them and Thorin wasn’t happy with that. Thorin wasn’t happy with a lot of things, generally, and he often grew grumpier the more turmoil he had in his life. Still there was also the thought of one or both of the twins having a teleportation mutation that allowed them to go down the East Coast in the blink of an eye. Well at least it answered the question of if the boys would show any other power besides low level telepathy.

“I’m going to have to call someone and let them know where you are. They’re probably very worried and scared right now not being able to find you two. You’re welcome here, you’re always welcome here no matter what. Now why don’t you two change clothes and I’ll make us a snack and then we can figure out who exactly we’re going to tell where you’ve popped off to.”

Food, it was the one thing Bilbo had been trained to use as a coping agent. It was the one thing every southerner learned to use as a coping agent. For great tragedy cookies, cakes, pies, and casseroles, were made and brought out and foisted upon people until they no longer felt anything other than panic over the amount of food they were now in possession of. Tea and snacks, that would help the boys while Bilbo fortified himself to calling someone in The Company and letting them know that the boys were safe and sound if not a little far away.

Perhaps Gandalf or Bofur? Gandalf would be a calm voice of reason while Bofur was likely to not be preoccupied with anything besides hunting for the children. Balin, Balin was always friendly and still called Bilbo regularly but he probably had his hands full from trying to keep Thorin and Dwalin from ripping apart the school in search of their nephews. Everyone else might ignore the call, not out of spite, but out of a distinct need to not send him into a panic as well over the fact that Dis was buried less than twelve hours before they lost their boys. They probably didn’t want to deal with a potentially catastrophic storm in a place where they couldn’t stop him while having to deal with everything else.

It took little time for Fili and Kili to change out of their funeral attire and into some of the spare outfits they had left behind from their last visit. They looked a little closer to normal, if it weren’t for the fact that their faces were both pale and blotchy and their hair uncombed and unbraided. Bilbo gathered them up into another hug, pressing more kisses to their heads, before carefully guiding them to the kitchen table placing mugs of tea and a plate of snacks before them.

“Who do you want me to call?”

Bilbo watched as the twins looked at him and then glanced at each other. Their communication wasn’t as silent as it would have been if Bilbo wasn’t near, the weather witch hearing snippets of thoughts not his own. It probably would have been clearer if his brain wasn’t full of static, making it hard for most telepathic communication to happen, but the boys were stubborn it seemed. Continuing to try and keep the bond with him open, trying to keep him ‘in the loop’, even when it was so difficult to do so.

“Not Thorin.”

Fili finally answered, his watery blue eyes determined and simmering with anger.

“Alright I can understand that, any other requests?”

The boys shook their heads and Bilbo internalized a sigh and wished he didn’t feel like he was signing his own death warrant. Dialling the number for Gandalf private cell Bilbo held the phone to his ear, watching the twins watch him with rapt attention.

“My dear Bilbo, what do I owe the pleasure?”

Gandalf’s voice was pleasant but worn, tired and stretched thin. Bilbo did his best not to focus on the noises in the background, the feral snarls or the sound of breaking furniture.

“Fili and Kili are with me Gandalf. Seems like they decided to manifest the rest of their mutation today.”

Bilbo tried to keep his voice light.

“Did the-“

“Are they hurt?”

Thorin’s voice came as a shock to Bilbo’s system. He felt pain flaring in the region of his heart, spreading through his chest and into his body, all along his veins and arties. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a sharp breath, steeling his nerves.

“No, they’re as fine as they can be considering today. They’re drinking tea and eating a snack. I’ll give them the phone if you promise not to yell at them today’s been hellish enough without adding that.”

There was a growl on the other end of the line and Bilbo knew Thorin wasn’t going to like the order. Tough though. Bilbo wasn’t going to have the boys have just one more thing piled onto the shit sundae this day was becoming. Thorin was going to hold his temper and if he couldn’t then he was just going to have to yell and rage at Bilbo instead. The boys could get a talking to later about powers and the scare they gave everyone, right now they just needed calm and quiet and rest with a good helping of love to help heal the wounds they had in their hearts.

“Fine.”

The word was gritted out through what sounded like clenched teeth, but Bilbo knew that Thorin meant it. Looking at the boys he handed them the phone, watching as they took it and held it between them, hovering over it together. It wasn’t long until they were handing the phone back over to Bilbo, the curly haired blond taking it gently.

“We’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

Was the last thing Thorin said before the line went dead. Bilbo felt his hand tremble as he let out a shaky sigh. Carefully placing his cellphone back on the table he looked at the twins, grateful that whatever link they had to him wasn’t strong enough for them to feel everything he currently was.

“Thorin will be here tomorrow. I figure we’d best rest up and wait. I’m sure Gandalf will come along too and we’ll figure out this situation to the best of our abilities.”


End file.
